Loving Ladybug Larvae

We need a dog. Without a pet, our house has become home to a rotating assortment of bugs. First, we raised butterflies. Now, we live with ladybug larvae. I think our family is single-handedly keeping Insect Lore — the store for all things buggy — in business.

Because April is National Poetry Month, I drafted “found poem” about ladybug larvae straight from the Insect Lore directions that accompanied the kit. (For a found poem, take a text, any text. You can subtract words, but not add any. Never rearrange the order. Changing tense, plurals, capitalization and punctuation is ok….see this “how to” post at 6 Teaching Authors.)

The Life of Ladybug Larvae

Eggs hatch.

Larvae search for food.

Shedding skin — molting,

Must store energy for change.

Don’t worry, in Ladybug Land, they have plenty of food.

So that’s it the life of larvae. Like the caterpillars before them, the larvae will eat and molt for a couple of weeks until they become pupae. And from those pupae shall emerge our caterpillars, we hope.

The Found Poem thing is a cool idea! I’m sure you’ve had fun and learned a lot with your butterflies and ladybugs, and as bugs go, those are ones I could live with, but I agree – dogs make better pets 🙂

I second the praying mantis oothecae. Seriously, though, if you’re at all squeamish about ants, the mantids might not be a good fit. I pride myself on my steely composure when it comes to the natural world and exposing my kids to it, but the thousands of manitids pouring (literally) out of that egg case totally creeped me out. That being said… I’ve hatched them several times since. 😉 Glutton for punishment.

We keep Insectlore in business, too. We’re now just getting refill eggs and larvae since we have all of the enclosures. The dog and guinea pigs haven’t stopped the rotating assortment of critters around here. Good luck with that.